


Glory Days

by Sholio



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Aging, Family Feels, Future Fic, Multi, Nostalgia, Zombie Hunters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 13:32:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12912951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: The modern-day midlife crisis fic nobody asked for. Steve's turning 50, nobody is handling it well (least of all Steve), Dustin wants to know how *he* got dragged into the middle of this, and oh, by the way, there's something weird in Hawkins. As per usual.





	Glory Days

**Author's Note:**

> Springsteen title because c'mon, there is no way Steve, especially middle-aged Steve, isn't a Springsteen fan.

Of course Steve Harrington was the kind of person who would have a midlife crisis, Nancy thought. Of _course_ he was. 

And of course it would happen once both kids were out of the house. Lily was in grad school, and MacKenzie was off in some kind of artists' cooperative in Milwaukee. It had never really occurred to Nancy, though in retrospect she realized it should have, how much of Steve's life had ended up revolving around the kids, in a way that neither hers nor Jonathan's had. Jonathan traveled for his art, taking pictures all over the world, and as for Nancy, working with the nonprofit had come to consume most of her evenings and weekends. She made time for the family, as much as she could -- but --

\-- but somehow she'd never really thought about how much she and Jonathan weren't around. That was the thing about having three parents and one who stayed home most of the time. Steve was always _there._ And if there was one thing Nancy had known about her life, it was that she didn't want to turn into her mom, whose life had been measured in terms of making the best casserole for the neighborhood potluck or the most cookies for the PTA bake sale. (And, now, especially since Dad was gone, revolved entirely around her grandkids; at least Holly took the brunt of that particular obsession, since she and her husband still lived in Hawkins and had four kids.)

And now Steve was turning fifty in a week, and he was doing the whole midlife crisis thing, like the big freaking stereotype that he both was and wasn't. For starters, he's bought the most goddamn ridiculous car she'd ever seen, and also the most expensive. They'd had an actual fight about it, the first fight they'd had in years. At least Jonathan hadn't been around for it.

"You bought a freaking Ferrari, Steve!"

"We can afford it. _I_ can afford it," Steve said, quiet and obstinate, the way he always got when they fought. It made it impossible to _win_ a fight with Steve; it was like trying to punch a pillow. He just rolled with the punches and didn't budge.

And the worst part was, he was right. She knew he hadn't used household money for this. Steve's dad had died a decade or so back, dropping dead at his desk of a heart attack -- "Died in the saddle," had been Steve's sardonic comment, black humor veiling the grief in his eyes. Nancy had never known exactly _how_ loaded Steve's parents were, he'd never talked about it, but she knew he had inherited a lot of money. The kids didn't have to worry about college, and the three of them weren't going to have to think about retirement, even after the stock market crash had taken a big chunk of whatever Steve's parents had left him.

But that both was and wasn't the damn point. It wasn't about the money (and it was). It was about how they'd always been practical vehicle owners, the entire household driving nice, small, fuel-economical vehicles, even during the cheap gas years. When hybrids became a thing, Nancy had promptly made sure they'd bought one.

That moronic example of consumer hubris sitting out in the driveway was the complete antithesis of everything the family had always stood for.

"Everything _you_ decided we stood for," was Steve's response to that, still mellow, but also with that unbending quality that meant he wasn't backing down. "Everything doesn't have to be practical and boring. We can have something fun every once in a while. Why shouldn't we?"

"I can't believe you're doing this _now_ , of all times, in the current political climate --"

"Oh come on, Nance, it's not going to cause the breakdown of Western democracy if we buy a car that can drive faster than your mom's station wagon."

"That!" Nancy snapped, pointing at him. "It's _that,_ that's the problem, and the car's just a symbol of it. It's this whole idea that you have to prove how macho you are by obtaining a status symbol that's nothing but a product of artificial scarcity, and then claim it's all individual choice, individual choice doesn't affect society, like everything you do is happening in a vacuum, and you don't even think it matters!"

"You know what? I think this isn't about the car and it isn't about me; it's about you feeling guilty that we have a nice house and more than one car and got through the recession just fine. This is you having a guilt complex that we aren't living in a shack feeding our kids Saltine crackers, and you're taking it out on me."

"Okay, first of all, that's ridiculous, and second, nice deflecting! This isn't about me!"

"Yeah, well, I don't think it's about me either!"

The argument had migrated upstairs to his bedroom; they all had separate living spaces within their shared house. Nancy stared as Steve hauled a suitcase out of the closet and started throwing clothing items into it, apparently at random.

"Are you _leaving?"_

"I'm going for a drive in my brand new Ferrari!"

"Steve. Stop. Stop right there and talk to me -- Steve --" Now he was sweeping a hand across the back of the sink, swiping various hair-care items willy-nilly into the suitcase before closing it. "Steve Harrington, get back here and -- Steve, let's talk. Steve. Please?"

She'd trailed him all the way down to the front hall, where he'd stopped, opened the hall closet, muttered to himself as he rummaged behind the umbrellas and snow boots and old dog leashes for dogs they didn't own anymore and the crutches from that time Jonathan broke his foot, made a little "aha" noise and came out with that stupid old baseball bat from Hawkins clutched in his fist.

The bottom dropped out of her stomach. He was taking the nailbat. This really _was_ serious. He'd taken that damn thing through every move; he'd had it in every apartment and house they'd lived in.

"What is the matter with you?" she asked as she chased him across the driveway to that idiotic car, that car that was like a glaring cherry-red symbol of everything that was wrong with America today. Steve threw the suitcase and nailbat in the back. 

"Steve, you can't just drive away -- Steve -- Steve, damn it!"

He stopped with a hand on the car door, started to reach out -- she drew back, his hand dropped, and he got in without a word. The engine revved. Nancy took a quick step backward as he reversed out of the driveway.

She snatched out her phone and texted: STEVE HARRINGTON, STOP THAT CAR THIS MINUTE!

The taillights of the Ferrari vanished down the street. Nancy stared after it, vastly confused, with a gnawing feeling of misery starting to creep in around the edges. 

_What just happened? Did he just leave me? Us? Is he just going to drive around the block and show up an hour later?_

_Why a Ferrari of all the stupid things? There are so many more useful things he could have done with that money! Donated it to literally any cause! Put it aside for the kids!_

_What the fuck?_

And slowly, as anger gave way to growing worry:

_Jonathan isn't going to be happy about this._

But she wasn't entirely sure which of them Jonathan would be unhappy with.

 

***

 

"Why on Earth would I know where he is?"

"Because you two text each other basically every day and you like everything he posts on Facebook. If he has a best friend besides us, Dustin, you're it. So if you hear from him at all --"

"If he calls me," Dustin said with absolute sincerity, "I will let you know, okay, Nancy? And look, I'm sure he's okay. He probably just needs some space. I'm sure he'll come crawling back in a day or two. You know what an idiot he can be. A complete and total idiot."

He hung up and turned around to glare at Steve, who was standing in the doorway to the kitchen of Dustin's condo, a carton of orange juice in one hand. He was wearing one of Dustin's T-shirts -- it said "GEEK IS THE NEW SEXY" -- since Steve had inattentively packed six pairs of pants and no shirts.

"An idiot?" Steve said. "Really, man. Where's the love."

"Not seeing any sign to the contrary right now." Dustin marched past him, snatching the carton of orange juice out of his hand. "And what did I tell you about drinking out of the carton? Were you raised in a barn? I don't know how Nancy and Jonathan put up with you."

"Some friend you are," Steve said, following him into the kitchen, where Dustin was retrieving a pair of glasses from the dishwasher.

"Do not start. Look, for the record, dude, as much as you're welcome to crash at my place whenever, I really don't appreciate getting dragged into your marital problems."

"I'm sorry about that. I didn't know she'd call you." Steve meekly accepted the glass of orange juice. "Thanks."

Dustin sighed and leaned on the counter and stared critically at Steve, who was slouching against the fridge in that cool-jock way he'd never really grown out of, even after two decades of being a house-husband. Steve's thick, unruly hair was going gray, but he'd turned out to be one of those people who didn't really seem to change a lot as he got older. It was really unfair. Dustin's hair was already receding and he was five years younger. The advantage to being friends with people older than you were was supposed to be watching _them_ get old first.

But a five-year age gap wasn't really that much: an eternity at 13, not really much of anything when it was the difference between 45 and 50. 

"I don't know how to feel," Dustin said, "about the fact that your big Jack Kerouac road trip was pretty much just driving from your house to my house, a drive of like an hour and a half."

"I couldn't think of where to go, okay? There isn't anywhere specific I want to see -- and -- I dunno. I don't know what I was doing, honestly."

"So what else is new," Dustin said, but not unkindly. After a moment, he asked, "Are you moving out? Like, for real, I mean?"

"What? No! No, I'm not. I just needed --"

"Space? Time?"

"I guess so. One of those."

"That is a really sweet ride, though," Dustin remarked, looking out the window of the condo overlooking the side drive where Steve had pulled the Ferrari behind Dustin's Mini Cooper.

"Right? I can't believe Nancy hit the roof about it. I bought it out of Dad's hedge fund money. You'd think I used the kids' college savings or something."

"Steve," Dustin said flatly, "don't forget I've known you since you were in high school, okay? You _knew_ she was going to hit the roof. Come on, dude, don't be a total dipshit."

"Look, I -- okay -- maybe?" The way Steve was ducking Dustin's stare let him know that Steve was well aware he had some culpability in the argument. "It's just ... look, maybe I wanted to make her mad, okay? At least she'd be aiming some feelings in my direction instead of, like, saving the whales and the refugees and the entire damn planet."

Dustin blinked at him. Steve looked away.

"Okay, wow, this is way too much honesty to have over a glass of orange juice," Dustin said, and started opened cabinets until he found a couple bottles of red wine and half a bottle of Bailey's. He never had been much of a drinker and had been actively trying not to since the divorce -- he'd seen the way it could go, knew too many guys his age back in Hawkins who let it go that way -- but he thought Steve, in particular, might need the release right now.

"Hey, I'm not much of a wine guy," Steve said as Dustin tried to find wine glasses, failed, and poured the wine into two more juice glasses from the dishwasher instead.

"Yeah, well, I'd suggest going out to a bar, but the problem with living close to where I work is that it's all college bars around here, which means we'd be drinking with a bunch of 22-year-olds, some of whom have probably taken classes from me. I don't think either of us needs the reminder that we're pathetic and middle-aged right now."

"Speak for yourself," Steve muttered, trading the orange juice for the wine.

"You're fifty, man. I hate to break it to you --"

"Not for another week!" Steve said, a little too quickly.

"Uh-huh." Dustin shoved some cereal boxes out of the way to lean on the counter and look out at the hummingbird feeders he'd hung in the back window. It wasn't the house he and Linda used to have before the divorce, but it was pretty nice, all things considered, and a lot closer to campus. "And that's got nothing to do with the Ferrari you just bought."

"I just figured I'm an adult and if I want something nice, I can buy something nice. Do you know the last thing I bought that was just for me? Yeah," Steve said, knocking back a large gulp of wine, "neither do I, because it was so goddamn long ago. I love the kids, I love Nancy and Jonathan, it's not like it's a bad life, it's just ..." 

"You get buried in all that grown-up shit like mortgages and insurance and putting a new roof on the house, and then you wake up and you're forty-five and you wonder what it was all for?" Dustin said. "Yeah. I can relate."

Steve looked up sharply, like he was coming back to himself from somewhere far away, and gave Dustin a light shove in the arm. "Hey ... how are you doing, man? Since, you know. Everything with Linda."

"I thought we were talking about your shitty life, not mine."

"My life's not shitty." Steve leaned his elbows on the counter next to Dustin, looking out at the hummingbird feeders and the campus buildings beyond them. "That's the worst part, in a way. I mean, God, I'm living the dream, kinda. I have not just one but two people that love me, great kids, a nice house, a 401K ..." He winced. "Sorry. I didn't mean to, uh --"

"Rub it in? You aren't. I mean, heck, I love my job, I love the students --" Dustin gave Steve a long look. "And _that's_ what you're missing, isn't it? Nancy and Jonathan don't quite get that, do they?"

Steve shrugged. Looked out the window. Reached for the bottle of wine to top off his glass. "It's so easy for them. They've _always_ known what they wanted to be. Even back in high school, they knew. Things have gone pretty much according to plan for them. And I'm just tagging along, trying to figure things out, you know?"

"What have you been doing since the kids moved out?" Dustin asked.

"Oh, little of this, little of that. Lots of home improvement stuff that we'd always put off when the kids were younger, but there's only so many things you can remodel before you've remodeled the whole house. Nance thinks I should go back to school --"

"That's not a bad idea."

"And study _what,_ though? There's nothing I really want to get a degree in. That's the whole problem."

"You don't have to declare a degree. Just ... I dunno, take some survey classes." Dustin smiled. "Take one of my chemistry classes. I always thought there was a brain hiding under that jock facade. Now's your chance to prove it."

Steve grinned, crinkling up the fine lines around his eyes and mouth. Up close, with the light from the window angling across his face, it was easier to see his actual age. Dustin thought, on the whole, he'd liked it better when Steve looked like the younger of the two of them.

"Weren't you just talking about not going out to the campus bars because it'd make us feel old?" Steve said. "And now you're suggesting I go to college with a bunch of twenty-year-olds."

Dustin punched him in the shoulder. "Get over yourself. I spend all day, every day around twenty-year-olds."

He was starting to feel the buzz from the wine, and he thought, from Steve's growing attitude of relaxation and easier smiles, that Steve was too. Damn it, they really _were_ getting old. In Dustin's twenties, he could have put down an entire one of those bottles and he wouldn't have felt it much. Then you get into your forties, pretty much give up drinking, and one glass puts you under the table.

Steve rested his chin on his fist. His grin was soft and a little sad. "I just wish I knew what I wanted out of life. It always looked so easy for them. For all of you. You're not supposed to still not know what you want to be when you grow up when you're fifty."

"I feel for you, man," Dustin told him. "I do. But if you plan to avoid Nancy and Jonathan while you're sorting it out, you'd better sort it out fast, or did you forget Will and Jeremy are getting hitched in California in two weeks? The whole Party's going to be there. Somehow I don't think it's going to escape notice if you duck out on it."

Steve jerked his head off his hand, the sleepy look leaving his eyes. "That's _this_ month? Seriously?"

"Time flies, right?"

"Jesus. _Yes._ I don't know why the fuck they're bothering with a wedding anyway. They've been together for, what, 15 years --"

"Try 22 years, man."

"What, really? Shit, we're old. Anyway, what's the point of getting married at that point? Nance isn't married to either me or Jonathan."

"Well, _would_ you?" Dustin said. "If you could? I mean, legally."

"What the fuck. Can we knock off the quizzing me about my life choices?" 

Dustin groaned and scrubbed a hand through his hair -- thinner now, and shorter, but still a mess of curls that his students teased him about. (Half the comments on Rate My Professor mentioned his mad-scientist hair. Not that he read those or anything.) "Yeah, you're right. Maybe the guy who's been divorced twice should leave it alone giving love-life advice to other people."

He didn't mean for it to come out as bitter as it did, any more than he expected Steve to throw an arm around his shoulders and drag him in for a fierce sideways hug.

"I'm being a selfish bastard," Steve said, his face turned into Dustin's hair. "Shit, you never talk about yourself anymore. How long has it been now, since Linda?"

"Two years." Dustin sighed; he didn't really want to, but he leaned into Steve's hug. Steve always gave the best hugs. They hadn't really done this since they were teenagers. Grown men weren't supposed to. But, hell. Fuck that macho bullshit.

"You know," Steve said, "since I'm here --"

"-- moved in, uninvited --"

"-- I'm thinking we put on Netflix, get drunk, and forget about our love lives for awhile."

"Why the hell not," Dustin sighed. It always used to be him and the others talking Steve into doing something ill-advised. Might as well go the other way for a change.

Some time later, sprawled on the couch with _Game of Thrones_ streaming on the TV, Dustin propped his head on his hand and remarked, "Hey, Steve. You said you don't know where you want to go. What if you have some company?"

"Excuse me, did you just invite yourself on my midlife crisis road trip?"

"The advantage to being tenured faculty is that I get summers off, more or less. And if you think you're crashing on my couch and parking your Ferrari in my parking space without giving me a chance to ride in it, then I hear there's a nice railroad bridge that you might want to try sleeping under."

 

***

 

Steve woke to a pounding headache and his phone vibrating in his jeans pocket. He already had it out and was blearily saying, "Hello?" on autopilot by the time his brain caught up with him and reminded him that nearly everyone who was likely to be calling him was someone he didn't want to talk to, but too late. Thanks, brain.

"Hey there." Jonathan sounded amused. "Where are you?"

Steve groaned and sat up, having to untangle himself from one of Dustin's mom's chunky afghans. There was a glass of water on the coffee table that Dustin must have left there. He sighed and took a drink to clear the taste of stale wine out of his mouth. "I refuse to answer on the grounds that Nancy might send Jane Wheeler to drag me back to Chicago. Where are you and why are you calling me in the middle of the night??"

"Still in Manila, where it's the middle of the afternoon. Did you get Nancy's texts?"

"If I did, I guess I slept through it." He scrubbed at his face, trying to unstick his eyelids -- it had definitely been a mistake at the end there, switching from wine to their own home-concocted mixers involving Dustin's incredibly limited selection of various sweet liqueurs. He wasn't 20 anymore, and his liver definitely wasn't. "Look, tell Nance -- tell her I'm sorry I ran out like that, it's just that I wasn't --"

"Steve. Hey." Something in Jonathan's voice cut through the fog in Steve's brain. "This isn't anything to do with -- well, with whatever is going on between you and Nancy. She got a call from Mike earlier today -- earlier tonight, that is, for you. Have you heard anything about that?"

"No." Steve sat forward on the couch, aware of the light coming on down the hall; Dustin was awake now too, apparently. "Heard about what?"

Jonathan started to speak, gave a humorless little laugh, and said, "Apparently there are walking dead in Hawkins."

The worst part was, he didn't even have to ask Jonathan to repeat himself. _"Zombies?_ We've got zombies now? Fucking Hawkins, man."

"Right? So again, I need to know where you are."

"Dustin's place."

This time Jonathan's little laugh was a happy one, the one that always made Steve fall a little bit more in love with him, even long after he thought it shouldn't be possible. "Nancy owes me five bucks," Jonathan said.

"You had a _bet?"_

"Which she lost. Okay, you're within driving distance, then. I'm gonna be on the next flight out, but, well, halfway around the world. It'll take awhile. Do you have something to write with?"

"It's three in the fucking morning," Steve complained, lurching to his feet. His head gave a vicious stab of protest. He stumbled into the kitchen, flicked on a light, and squeezed his eyes shut when it jabbed icepicks into his brain.

"You don't sound good," Jonathan said. "You okay? I mean, aside from the waking you up in the middle of the night thing."

"I'm fine. Just forgot I'm not 20 anymore, that's all." He located a pad of paper that Dustin apparently used for class notes. It had cats on it. "What d'ya got for me?"

"A shopping list," Jonathan said. "This is from Mike. Stuff to pick up on your way down. Two gas cans --"

"This is zombie hunting stuff? You're giving me a zombie hunting shopping list?"

"Are you writing this down or what?"

"Writing it down. Two gas cans. Jesus. What else?"

While he scribbled a list of increasingly insane items -- "what _kind_ of propane tank, Jonathan, come on, do I look like a flamethrower expert to you?" -- the toilet flushed somewhere else in the condo, and a few minutes later, Dustin lurched into the kitchen, wearing an oversized T-shirt and boxers, his hair a tousled mess. 

"God," Dustin groaned, filling a glass at the sink as Steve hung up the call, "those mudslides were a mistake. Did Nancy text you too?"

"So I hear. I just got off the phone with Jonathan."

"Zombies, right?" Dustin said.

"Zombies."

"Fucking Hawkins," Dustin muttered. He got a bottle of aspirin out of the cabinet, dumped two into his palm, and tossed the bottle to Steve. "We both ought to sleep it off a little more before we get on the road. I'm gonna set my alarm for six, okay?"

"No," Steve said. 

"Sorry, dude. Duty calls."

"Good thing I've got the nailbat in the back of the Ferrari, then."

"You're kidding." Dustin stared at him. "No, you're not kidding. Man, you ever think you might have a problem?"

"Are you telling me you're sorry I packed it?"

"No," Dustin sighed. "No, I am not. Just ... let's sleep. See you in not enough hours."

 

***

 

It wasn't the road trip either of them had had in mind, but the half-day's drive to Hawkins was actually pretty fun, cruising in the Ferrari with the top down past acres of corn and soybeans, through sprawling freeway chain-store developments, past little towns nestled in isolated patches of trees with a water tower dominating the skyline. The Ferrari had a variety of options for music, including streaming satellite radio and a USB outlet for plugging in a phone. Dustin had grabbed a handful of CDs out of the back of his car before they left, so they ended up listening to an eclectic collection of music encompassing Springsteen (Steve approved), Barenaked Ladies (meh), and Cowboy Junkies (how about no).

Dustin was the one who started quoting _Blues Brothers_ when they passed the exit for Joliet, and then they couldn't shut up, throwing quotes from the movies of their youth back and forth until they'd crossed the Indiana state line. Around Indianapolis they put the top up and stopped at a couple of hardware stores and a Farm  & Fleet to get the items on Jonathan's list, at least the ones that would fit in the car. 

"I can't believe I'm putting full gas cans in the back of a brand new Ferrari," Steve complained.

"Next time you buy a midlife crisis overcompensation machine, pick a Humvee, would you? I bet you could run over a lot of zombies in one of those."

Steve winked at him. "You might say that that was over kill... I say it was just enough kill."

Dustin groaned. " _Evil Dead_ , right?"

"Seemed appropriate."

"Yeah," Dustin muttered, "you're gonna be wishing you'd bought a Humvee when you're picking bits of zombie out of your two hundred thousand dollar grille."

 

***

 

Hawkins was just the same as Nancy remembered it. (Aside from the zombies. But even that was filed under As Per Normal, and anyway, Mike had really been overstating things; there were just a few of them, scientists who'd been trapped under the rubble of the collapsing remains of the condemned laboratory back in the big explosion of '87, and Jane and the Chief had mopped up most of them by the time Nancy got there.)

No, the weird thing was, no matter how long she was gone, the town never seemed to change. There was the new shopping district on the highway outside town, but even that wasn't _new;_ it'd been there since the late '90s. The only real change lately was that Holly and Dan had sold their cute little ranch house over on Washington and moved in with Mom, who had been bouncing around in that big house since Dad died, and was starting to have more trouble getting around. 

Nancy hadn't been down to see them since the two households consolidated. She couldn't help being privately grateful that Holly lived close enough to take care of Mom, so Nancy didn't have to move back to do it, and she suspected that Mike felt the same way. 

In adulthood, she hadn't stayed close to either of her siblings, but Mike still grabbed her and hugged the stuffing out of her when she turned up on Holly and Mom's front porch.

"Oof." She slung the shotgun over her shoulder to get into a more comfortable hugging position with less chance of anyone getting shot in the foot. "Nerd."

"Tomboy," Mike returned casually. He rested an elbow on her shoulder and she glared up at him. Her "little" brother had never stopped enjoying the fact that he'd gained over half a foot on her in adulthood. "Where's your harem?"

"They'll be here," she said. Jonathan had called to let her know that he'd managed to make contact with Steve (and also, that Dustin was a little rat fink, not that he'd put it that way). "Unless we want to text to let them know not to bother coming down. Jane was just cleaning up the last of the rubble when I left."

"And miss the chance for a family reunion?" 

"What's this about a family reunion?"

This was from Holly, appearing from behind Mike to clasp Nancy in a somewhat tentative hug. If Nancy wasn't close to anyone in her immediate family, her relationship with Holly was the most distant -- the two were all but strangers. Holly had barely been entering kindergarten when Nancy had gone off to college.

But still family. 

Like the way they all came back to Hawkins, from as far off as the Philippines, when danger threatened.

Nancy rubbed at her eyes, not sure why they were stinging all of a sudden. Except, she was going to be glad to see Jonathan when she picked him up at the airport in twelve hours or so.

And Steve. The asshole. Stupid Ferrari and all.

"We should try getting together at some point when the town _isn't_ being overrun with monsters from another dimension," Mike said, sounding a little too cheerful about it. "Just a thought."

"Shhh!" Holly hissed, holding her finger to her lips. "You know Dan doesn't --"

The two elder Wheeler siblings shared an eloquent look. 

"One of these days," Nancy said, not really meaning it.

Nothing ever changed in Hawkins, not really. And her life wasn't here now; her life was a couple hundred miles away, in a suburb of Chicago where even now a neighbor would be coming over to water their plants, since Steve wasn't home to do it.

She really had made a lot of assumptions about what Steve wanted. Who Steve _was._ It shouldn't take a Ferrari-sized bludgeon to the side of the head to make that obvious.

Which was probably why Dustin had lied to her about where Steve was. Not that she didn't plan to take a few strips off the hide of the curly-haired little dolt when she saw him next.

"Oh hey!" Mike reported, looking at his phone as they all moved the reunion party into the Wheeler front hall. "Text from Dustin. They're just leaving Indianapolis, ETA about an hour. They want to know where they should bring the flamethrower supplies."

"Wait, the _what?"_

 

***

 

In the end, Dustin was very put out that he didn't get to put his chemistry skills to work on barbecuing zombies, Steve considerably less so.

And so, Nancy found herself in the stupid car with Steve, driving to Indianapolis at 1 a.m. to pick up Jonathan. Steve had put the top down, because of course he had, and the wind was cool and pleasant in her hair. The chirring of the cicadas rose and fell as they passed groves of dark trees.

"Remember that BMW you had in high school?" she said suddenly. "Remember how we'd go out driving at night, the year after Barb died?"

Steve glanced over at her -- wary, it seemed. "Trying to get away," he said at last.

"Yes," she said, almost laughing with relief, because they'd never really talked about it afterwards, and somehow it was good to know that they were on the same page now, even if they hadn't been back then. "And yet we couldn't, it was like the town kept pulling us back in."

"We had some good times in that car, though." Steve looked wistful.

"What happened to it, anyway?"

"Sold it. I was just paying for parking anyway, after we moved out of Hawkins. Never got much use out of it anymore."

The thought came to Nancy very suddenly that the BMW might have been the last thing Steve owned that was really _his._ It was a startling thought and one that she tried to put away, because, well, they were married, in all but name, and _everything_ they had belonged to all of them, didn't it?

But she had the nonprofit, and its predecessors; and Jonathan had his photography business. Steve had ... the house, the kids, the ... the home. Steve was the thing she and Jonathan and the kids orbited around. Steve was the center.

But what did it feel like to actually _be_ that? She thought about the way her mom bounced around that big, empty house, and spent all her time on Facebook, posting pictures of Holly's kids.

She reached out between the seats and took Steve's hand. He glanced over at her and smiled. His fingers squeezed hers back.

"I wasn't going to stay gone, you know," he said, his voice soft enough she had to concentrate to pick out the words between the slipstream of the wind and the oldies station playing on the car's stereo.

"I know."

"I don't even know why I left."

He probably didn't. Introspection was another thing that had never been a Steve Harrington trait. 

"I think I could learn to deal with the car," she said.

Steve snorted. "No, I feel ridiculous driving the thing. I found that out on the drive down. It's got ground clearance of about three inches. You know how many potholes are between here and Illinois? A lot, that's how many."

Nancy laughed in spite of herself and squeezed his hand. "What if it's not exactly a Ferrari but ... kind of the same? I don't know, what about a new Beemer or something? A Mustang?"

"Ooh." His thumb worked back and forth across her knuckles. "Keep talking."

"A classic Mustang, not a new one. Cherry red." She turned to look at his beloved face in the glow of the instrument panel, her hair fluttering across her own face as she pushed it back with her free hand. "You remember what else we used to do in that BMW, right? Other than drive?"

"Like I could forget. Remember that time at the quarry when the Chief almost caught us because some fisherman called in a report of poachers?"

"Oh God. Remember when you got that amazing bruise from falling on the gearshift when you were trying to reach my -- uh --"

"Your gearshift," Steve said, and laughed.

He was such a fucking dork. Dear Lord.

She'd give him the moon if she could.

"I'm just throwing a suggestion out there," she said, pulling his hand over to rest on her thigh. "I say you trade in the Ferrari for a Mustang, and then we take that Mustang and we road-trip out to Cali for Will and Jeremy's wedding. We've got two weeks to get there. A lot of time for finding quarries along the way, don't you think?"

There was a silence from the driver's seat. She looked over at Steve with his hand resting loosely on the wheel, the radio playing Talking Heads (and how the hell was that _oldies_ now?!). Finally he said, "If the three of us are going to be driving across the country, we might want to pick something that has a backseat with more than three inches of leg room."

"Oh my God," she said. "You are such a parent. You can't even have a decent midlife crisis without worrying if everyone has enough leg room. Steve, do you want a Mustang, or not?"

"I'll surprise you," he said cheerfully.

That was a bad sign.

But now they were looping into the traffic leading towards the Indianapolis airport, where Jonathan would be getting off a plane and they'd be waiting at the baggage claim to sweep him up in their arms. And Nancy really didn't care if Steve turned up with a Winnebago. She'd deal.

"Remember when you could pick up people at the gate?" she said. "Before 9/11?"

"I bet our kids don't."

"We're old," Nancy said.

"So fucking old."

His hand crept up her thigh.

"I've got a deal for you," she said. "We aren't going to be able to hit it going out, so we can't exactly do this _on_ your 50th birthday, but on the way back, we might be able to hit Burning Man."

Steve gave her a look of pure amazement. "You and Jonathan both loathe the entire concept of Burning Man."

"Yes," she said with heartfelt feeling. "Yes, I know. But you only turn 50 once. Jonathan and I will both reach that point next year, and I'm letting it be known right now that we expect something equally amazing."

"More amazing than Burning Man? I don't think that's possible."

"I said _equally_ amazing."

"I'm guessing the Superbowl doesn't count."

"If you take me to the Superbowl for my birthday, Steve, so help me --"

"Nancy," he said, making her turn her head. "If you want me to spend the entire evening, hell, the entire _week_ at a charity event for war orphans with a lineup of 50 acoustic guitar musicians, I will go there and I will _like it."_

"You're --" She drew a breath. They'd just pulled up at a stoplight; his face was a study in light and shadow, black and red and green. "You're beautiful, Steve Harrington."

After a brief pause, he said, "Is this where I tell you that you're an idiot?"

"Don't push your luck."

 

***

 

And so, Steve turned up driving a 1969 VW bus -- after he'd driven it up to Milwaukee to let MacKenzie's art commune paint it. The back had been refitted for camping in. The whole thing smelled vaguely of weed. It drank gas like a bottomless hole and burned oil which it sprayed out in unhealthy-looking blue clouds.

It was the most ridiculous thing that Nancy had ever seen in her life. This made the Ferrari seem vaguely _normal._ They were all three pushing fifty, for crying out loud.

She and Jonathan both (reluctantly) loved the absolute hell out of it.

They camped their way across the U.S. 

They found a lot of quarries.

They very nearly missed Will and Jeremy's wedding in San Francisco (but not quite).

And Dustin turned up at the wedding driving a 1973 Camaro, having _also_ driven across the country, with Mike and Jane, apparently.

"So is having a midlife crisis contagious," Steve remarked as they wandered Fisherman's Wharf and sea-lion-watched along the harbor, "or ..."

"Fuck you, Harrington, it's an awesome car. I might even consider flying back and letting you drive it, if you ask nicely."

"Nah," Steve said. "Later. Right now, I've got a VW bus and a date with Burning Man."

**Author's Note:**

> My general ideas for where they are/what they're doing:  
> • Dustin is teaching chemistry in Rockford, IL (though I left the location vague on purpose, since I didn't want to describe too many details of a place I haven't been; just insert "midwestern liberal arts college")  
> • Steve, Nancy & Jonathan live together in a suburb of north Chicago.  
> • Mike and Jane are on the East Coast.  
> • Will is out in California (and engaged).  
> • Lucas and Max managed to be Mr. and Ms. Not Appearing In This Fic, so you can make up whatever future for them that you want. (Headcanon, though, is that they had an amicable breakup in high school, Lucas is happily married somewhere definitely _not_ Hawkins, and Max is currently with the Coast Guard and dating a woman who owns a fishing boat down in the Florida Keys. She emails regular "Florida Man" clippings to her friends while not admitting that she's had a few Florida Man moments of her own.)  
>  • I had some Hopper bits written that I am very sad I had to cut, because he is ancient and crotchety and the (former) kids all adore him while being also slightly terrified of him. Jane's the only one who can really talk back to him.


End file.
